Manufacturing full auto weapons? nope, sorry. SEMI automatic weapons, for which they had a license. You really should read up on the subject more IMO.
In addition to allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct, Koresh and his followers were accused of stockpiling illegal weapons. Authorities investigated these charges and obtained a warrant to search Koresh's compound. Former Davidian Marc Breault claimed that Koresh had "...M16 lower receiver parts"
[7] (combining certain
M16 components with a modified
AR-15 lower
receiver possibly constitutes the manufacture of a firearm that would be classified as a machine gun;
[10] the Hughes amendment, attached to the
Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, effectively outlawed civilian ownership of any machine guns manufactured after the date of enactment
[11]).
The January 5, 1992 interview of David Koresh by Martin King of Australian TV show
A Current Affair included this exchange:
King: "Would you use a gun if someone trespassed?"
Koresh: "They come in here with a gun and they start shooting at us, what would you do?"
[12]
According to the Affidavit presented by ATF investigator David Aguilera to US Magistrate Dennis G. Green on February 25, 1993, the Branch Davidian gun business (the "Mag Bag", Route 7, Box 555-B, Waco, Texas, 76705, located on Farm Road number 2491), had purchased many legal guns and gun parts from various legal vendors (such as forty-five semi-automatic AR15 lower receivers from Olympic Arms). Deliveries by UPS for the "Mag Bag" were accepted and paid for at Mount Carmel Center by Woodrow Kendrick, Paul Fatta, David Koresh or Steve Schneider. These purchases were traced by Aguilera through the normal channels used to track legal firearms purchases from legal vendors. None of the weapons and firearms were illegally obtained nor illegally owned by the "Mag Bag"; however, Aguilera affirmed to the judge that in his experience, in the past other purchasers of such legal gun parts had modified them to make illegal firearms. The search warrant was justified not on the basis there was proof that the Davidians had purchased anything illegal, but on the basis that they
could be modifying legal arms to illegal arms, and that automatic weapon fire had been reported on the compound.
[13] When the reports of automatic fire were first received, Steve Schneider and David Koresh showed the county sheriff department a
"Hellfire" device, a quick-firing trigger sold with an ATF letter that the device was not a machinegun.
